


Tractable

by rabbitprint



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Creation, Gen, Summoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26635195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitprint/pseuds/rabbitprint
Summary: Set pre-game, spoilers through MSQ 5.3, references Tales from the Shadows. A Lahabrea and Ifrit short.Whenever the time comes to show an Amalj'aa tribe how to finally bring their god to life, it is Lahabrea who inevitably makes the trip.
Relationships: Lahabrea & Ifrit (Final Fantasy XIV)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30
Collections: Final Fantasy Write Prompt Challenge 2020





	Tractable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [illegible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illegible/gifts).



> _Prompt #17 from FFxivWrite 2020: 'fade.'_

He wants to say he likes the Amalj'aa. They are a sensible people when one considers their ability to survive in even the blistering climes of the desert, mastering the arts of metallurgy and smithing with a patience to endure the added heat of the forge. They are practical when it comes to matters of personal identification and one's achievements. Ruthless when there are the right opportunities. Hardy, for enduring labors both physical and spiritual.   
  
They are also nearly completely enthralled by their worship of their god, and that makes them eminently tractable.   
  
But he does not. Lahabrea has visited them many times over the generations, and while he could have taken the time to set himself up as a proper adjunct in their collective belief -- a messenger of their god, a harbinger who comes only when they show enough devotion and sacrifices to sate the divine -- he never has allowed himself to become invested. A perpetual disdain sits deep within his chest whenever he is forced to deal with them. It is a coal which has burned its own cavity to rest within, glowing with malice and siphoning air from his lungs. He feeds it with every visit he makes to them, not allowing its scorn to die.   
  
Despite his distaste, he does not allow any other Ascian to manage the task. Whenever the time comes to show an Amalj'aa tribe how to finally bring their god to life, it is Lahabrea who inevitably makes the trip.   
  
This time around, the Amal'jaa tribe he visits is situated far into the Southern Thanalan deserts, but not so far that they do not regularly clash against the other races. Lahabrea has already instructed them in what little they need to know. Their own feverish beliefs bury the rest of his words like bones in the sand. The air tastes perpetually of ash around them; he can feel their aggressions coating his lungs.   
  
Even before they have summoned their god, they already have a clear idea of how it should serve them.  
  
The tribe's shaman finishes the ritual with ease. Warriors ring the circle, spears gripped tightly in their massive hands as they watch aether pour in glistening rivers from the crystals piled in the center. Banners stud the sand. A full brace of sacrifices from Ul'dah has been laid out across the ground, their limbs slack and unmoving. There is no need to keep them shackled any longer, not when their aether has all been drained to empty.   
  
With a triumphant shout, the shaman lifts their staff in the final words of the incantation. The air pulses, flexing in and out like the first sluggish beat of a heart. Heat ripples rising from the packed earth are matched and mirrored as an orb slowly whirls into being, a second sun to chastise the sky.  
  
A howl goes up from over a dozen throats when the first taloned hand hits the ground.   
  
_Ifrit._  
  
As one, the Amalj'aa scream in frantic excitement -- and then from a different emotion as their god tempers them. The wave of power rushes past, immersing Lahabrea in its energy like an ocean swallowing the shore. All the brutality of its domination is little more than a soft breeze against his soul; he does not feel even the slightest urge to care about the newly-shaped primal, let alone adore.  
  
He neither dies, nor falls into worship, and -- as if alerted by his indifference -- Ifrit turns its head directly towards him.   
  
Lahabrea slides off his perch.  
  
Every creation of a concept is affected by the minds of those who summoned it. Ifrit, this time, was brought forth by worshippers who desired only terror and death in their enemies. Its body has been far distorted from its original design; its form is grotesque. There is nothing elegant about the lines of its skull, or the way that aether cracks and melts through its own skin in weeping lines of lava. Its muscles bulge around the twisted spirals of its bones, dreamed up by those who expected only raw power and anger from their god.   
  
It huffs, growling guttural syllables into the air. It can barely speak.  
  
It is a primal -- a derivative from a prime concept -- and one of the joys a creator should always retain is the joy of seeing others use their ideas.   
  
Lahabrea reminds himself of these things as he walks slowly across the sand. Ifrit's tail lashes angrily, kicking up gouts of sand that cloud the air in a haze. When he does not stop in his methodical approach, the creature arches its head back in a snarl, and then vomits out a wave of flame.   
  
Lahabrea slides through it, displacing himself before the incineration hits.   
  
Ifrit, to its credit, remains canny enough that it does not attack a second time. Rather, it squats back and studies him, snapping its teeth in warning when he finally comes to a halt before its front claws, careless of the danger waiting in those wicked talons. A single twitch of its hand would eviscerate his body. The bellows of its breath distorts the air with heat.   
  
In its glossy eyes, Lahabrea can see himself reflected in curving, twin distortions. He looks into them without fear, past his own face staring back, and finally glimpses what he was searching for: a sliver of _presence_ that has been twisted up and forced into the ungainly prison that the Amalj'aa have fashioned for it this time.   
  
Arcane entities are not fashioned with souls to start. Nor do they spontaneously generate them on their own. Souls are hardly necessary for identity or sentience either way, and so the Ascians had never been particularly concerned with the lack. It had only been by accident whenever their creations had managed to catch one, like butterflies bumbling their way into jars.   
  
Accident -- and yet, even one occurrence had been enough to trigger the curiosity of Amaurot's researchers, back before the Sundering.  
  
Certain designs had continued forward, using Lahabrea's own firebird as proof for inspiration. Rather than seeking to replicate a soul, the researchers had looked into every means of partnering such forces benevolently together, until they had finally come to the conclusion that existing souls could be placed _within_ prime concepts: a gifted heart, allowing the entity's powers to expand into more deliberate control, and to retain a chain of permanency even past the death of its physical form.   
  
The body could be destroyed. A primal's soul would retain its own history. It could be called back the next time the concept was summoned -- again and again, serving as a reincarnation throughout the ages for creatures which normally would have none.   
  
Elidibus had not been the only one who had been suitable for such purposes.  
  
Craning his neck back, Lahabrea looks up to the coiled muscles of the creature looming above him. Standing this close to Ifrit is like being thrown into an oven, baking alive as the air wicks all moisture out of his body. Its claws flex against the ground, raking deep furrows into the earth which hiss as sand fills the gouges back up again.   
  
"Hello," he says softly. He cannot help the faint smile which twists his lips. "Do you even remember me anymore?"  
  
There is no point in removing his mask -- the entity would not recognize the flesh he wears presently -- but he allows his sigil to flare, glimmering into life.  
  
Ifrit snorts, its tail going still. Slowly, its maw dips towards him, the wedge-like jaw glittering with fangs. It sniffs at him once, twice. Then a long, garbled growl comes out of its throat: a twisted attempt at speech from a body that has not been given license to utter such sounds, for its creators never thought that it might have the capacity to begin with.  
  
Lahabrea nods anyway, as if the strangled noises are merely another parlance. Slowly, he reaches up until his gloved fingertips rest gently on the underside of the creature's jaw, and then he holds them there.  
  
"Someday," he promises. So much of Ifrita's beauty has been stripped away. So much beauty -- and dignity, and _awareness_ , consciousness fading further each time it has been forced into a stunted cage which has only grown smaller throughout the millennia. There is barely anything left. "Someday, you will be free again, my friend."  
  



End file.
